A moving Southern bildungsroman written with verve.
In Brittain’s (Marriage Roulette, 2006) novel, a callow Kentucky teen joins a traveling Christian revival group and learns quickly about the ways of the world.
Young Michael Boone is dropped off with his Aunt Elizabeth in Calhoun, Kentucky, while his parents look for work. Three years later, he’s all but abandoned there and anxious to earn some money. When his aunt takes him to a Christian revival headed by the charismatic Brother Daniel, an opportunity presents itself when the group needs a new truck driver. Initially, Michael is startlingly unworldly—he seems unaware that there are religious believers other than Christians—but he’s quickly disabused of his innocence by the troupe’s decadence. Brother Daniel is unreservedly lecherous, particularly toward very young girls, which Brittain unflinchingly depicts: “Brother Daniel had mastered the skill of touching interesting areas of the female form in such a manner that it was unclear, to those watching, whether it was blatant fondling or merely fatherly care.” Michael begins a romantic relationship with fellow teenager Ruth, one of Mother Daniel’s daughters, who’s desperate to run away and escape the sexual advances of her stepfather, Brother Daniel. Michael thinks about running away with Ruth, but he’s unsure if he truly loves her—and he’s also having sexual trysts with her mother. Then, one day, he’s presented with an uncommon opportunity to leave the revival and secure a better life. Brittain seems finely attuned to the absurdity that can be found in rank hypocrisy, and he expresses it in a manner that’s impressively reminiscent of Tom Wolfe’s work. Brother Daniel, for instance, is portrayed as an avaricious, racist pedophile who nonetheless strenuously preaches the gospel of Jesus. The revival introduces Michael to sexual libertinism, “racial vitriol,” unrestrained alcoholism, and bottomless avarice—but not the Lord. Indeed, if Michael learns anything at all on his trip, it’s how to lie. However, the author also tempers the salaciousness of Michael’s experience with an immersion in canonical literature—a gift bestowed by his hilarious but tantalizingly complex tutor, Bert. Overall, Brittain conveys his story with a literary realism that never devolves into cheap cynicism.
A moving Southern bildungsroman written with verve.Pub Date: Nov. 25, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-63393-510-5
Page Count: 238
Publisher: Koehler Books
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
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